Many restaurants offer customers wet towels to wipe their hands before a meal.
These wet towels are usually reusable towels that are collected after use, laundered, and offered to subsequent customers. However, washing wet towels consumes a large quantity of water. Also, due to the possibility of residual chemicals and germs remaining in wet towels after laundering, from sanitary and environmental standpoints, the use of wet towels is problematic.
To overcome the problems posed by the use of wet towels, many restaurants are now using disposable wet tissues individually packaged in plastic.
However, haphazard disposal of such plastic packaging augments environmental pollution.
Recently, traditional and fast-food restaurants and public washrooms have begun using tissue in rolls fitted into a separate container that permits a required amount of tissue to be extracted and cut for use.
Such an apparatus that automatically dispenses roll tissue is illustrated in FIG. 1.
A conventional automatic roll tissue dispenser as illustrated includes: a housing 1, rolled tissue 2, a driving roller 31′ and a driven roller 32′ for compressing and feeding the rolled tissue 2, a contacting wetting device 5 that contactually discharges water to wet the rolled tissue 2, an indirect wetting device 6 that supplies water to the driven roller 32′ to indirectly wet the tissue 2, an upper and lower blade 82′ and 81′ for cutting the wet tissue 2 in a predetermined length, and a tissue discharging unit 7 for discharging the cut tissue 2.
When such a conventional automatic tissue dispensing apparatus is used, the apparatus directly discharges water to wet tissue that is then cut into a predetermined length and dispensed.
An almost identical apparatus to the one above, while not illustrated in the diagrams herein, is disclosed in Korean Utility Model No. 1999-0019082 and Korean Patent Laid-Open Publication No. 1996-0042287.
However, because conventional automatic tissue dispensers use rolled tissue installed inside the housing, having to change the rolls is an inconvenience for a user. Furthermore, because it is hard to visually check the amount of tissue used, it is difficult to discern how much tissue there is remaining for use.
In addition, because conventional automatic tissue dispensers use rolled tissue installed inside the housing, they require a blade or similar cutting device to cut the tissue into predetermined lengths. After a certain duration of use, the blade wears and becomes blunt, necessitating replacement.